Ever wanted to be in charge? Well, in my own little world I will be, one day. Just not quite yet. I'm a bit tired at the moment... maybe I'll take over after I've had my little nap.
The United Dingdom - stating the bleeding obvious so you don't have to.
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Wednesday, 23 November 2016

Weird Science

The biggest problem in trying to explain what is
happening to the west right now is the sheer number of commentators trying to
explain what is happening to the west right now. Yesterday I linked to this
piece by Paul Mason in The Guardian. Reading it again I am struck by the way he seems to happily contradict himself,
and tie his argument up in knots, determined to try and make ‘the facts’ fit
his novel thesis that Brexit is a result of a fear of freedom and not the
forty-year-long desire to attain that self-same thing. But as all good
Orwellians know, freedom is slavery in the same way that ignorance is strength.

I blame psychology, sociology and all the other second-rank
‘ologies masquerading as science and practising the art of making something
simple into something complicated. Add enough questionable theory into the
process and you can make a career out of it. An ant colony is complex, but its
constituent parts are pretty simple. I grant you a human is more complicated
than an ant, though in all fairness, not a lot. But we are suckers for
flattery, so tell a mob of simple shaved apes that they are marvellously
sophisticated and you can lead them quite a long way up the garden path for a
pat on their bony skulls.

Leaders have, of course, been exploiting what we now refer
to as psychology for ever. Inspire loyalty, fear, loathing and common purpose
in the mob and they will roll over to have their tummies tickled. Trump knows
this and can appeal to the normal human instincts for self-preservation and
unity and a defence of the values that bind ordinary Americans, despite himself
having travelled a long way from ordinary. This is why the left-leaning intelligentsia
both despise him so much and despair at his popularity. Why, with their superior, big caring brains, were they not able to persuade people against?

See, the trouble with psychology is it works both ways.
While you were busy studying away inventing subtle explanations for simple
things, we simple things were just getting on with it. After all, somebody has
to keep the vending machines filled, put goods on the shelves, move money
around and manufacture all that stuff we seem unable to do without. Every now
and then we looked up and scratched our heads and wondered what on earth you
lot were thinking, but we always imagined, or hoped, you’d grow out of it and
come and join us in building a decent society.

But no, the ‘ologies are a rich seam to mine and as you
dug deeper into the psychological bedrock you uncovered the fools’ gold of ever
more nuanced reasons to feel grievance and hurt. Whatever ails you, you had a
reason for it; you’re in the wrong body, the patriarchy is keeping you down, glass
ceilings, self-esteem... daddy issues. The worst thing was to invert the simple
truth that in most cases what you make of your life is up to you and instead you
managed to seduce yourselves into believing your own codswallop, that
everything is somebody else’s fault. And that only your acolytes were clever
enough to see it.

The left: comfortably numb, uncomfortably dumb

If your investigations had been confined to the merely
academic, the findings laid out in dusty, infrequently consulted tomes in
library archives then fair enough. Like phrenology, your studies would have
been interesting and amusing relics of a bygone, Freudian age. But you managed
to persuade the gullible that your complex version of humanity, contrary to
your own advocacy of egalitarianism, was superior to the reality of the masses.
You succumbed to ‘the precious’ of your own devising. The funniest thing is
that as you now reap what you sowed – the disdain of those you disdained – your
imagined massive intellects are none the wiser as to how we got here. I think a
whole lot of us are going to enjoy Trump’s presidency.